Supreme Court: Nets Slam Overturning of Liberal Law....
“As one reporter put it today, the U.S. Supreme Court has driven a stake through the heart of the most important civil rights law ever enacted, the Voting Rights Act....”
— Anchor Brian Williams opening the NBC Nightly News, June 25.
“Did you think on that day when Lyndon Johnson signed this [the Voting Rights Act] into law that five members of a Supreme Court, the majority, would some day gut it the way it has today?”
— Anchor Andrea Mitchell to Democratic Congressman John Lewis on MSNBC’s Andrea Mitchell Reports, June 25.
“If I may speak metaphorically, I believe John Roberts took out a knife and plunged it into the Voting Rights Act’s soft underbelly, and then dragged the gasping, dying body across the street onto the steps of the Capitol building and left it there with a note to Congress saying it would be a shame if this law were to die.”
— Host Chris Hayes on MSNBC’s All In, June 25.
...But Applaud “Historic” Rejection of Defense of Marriage
“Landmark ruling: The Supreme Court redefines the modern American family. Two historic victories for gay rights and same-sex marriage. Outside, the emotional reaction, the nationwide response; and right here, the tiny 84-year-old woman whose mighty determination just changed the course of history....Good evening on this historic night, a night when America has a new definition of what it means to be married.”
— Anchor Diane Sawyer at the top of ABC’s World News, June 26.
“Once in a while, a decision by the Supreme Court is etched into the granite of our history....As the words were read, cheers went up — a sharply divided court advanced the cause of gay rights in two cases.”
— Anchor Scott Pelley beginning the CBS Evening News, June 26.
Vilifying Clarence Thomas as a Holocaust-Inviting Jew
“Clarence Thomas’s actions here today, though consistent, though tragic to me, are even more so in light of the bulk of decisions he’s rendered in the name of a judicial vote on the Supreme Court: A symbolic Jew has invited a metaphoric Hitler to commit holocaust and genocide upon his own people.”
— Georgetown professor and MSNBC analyst Michael Eric Dyson on MSNBC’s Martin Bashir, June 25, talking about the Supreme Court ruling on the Voting Rights Act.
Conservative Movement Wants to Keep Workers & Minorities Down
“The only thing that satisfies the conservative movement in this country is when they can keep a liberal down, when they can keep a worker down, when they can keep a minority down.”
— Host Ed Schultz on MSNBC’s The Ed Show, June 29, talking about the Supreme Court’s voting rights’ decision.
Blame ObamaCare Failings on GOP “Sabotage”
“You could argue that there are some Republicans that are trying to sabotage the law, that they’re hoping to not get it off the ground, and then they can suddenly make the case, ‘See, we’ve got to get rid of it.’ And they’ve got some state governors that are openly trying to sabotage it.”
— NBC News political director and chief White House correspondent Chuck Todd on Meet the Press, July 7.
Distorting Facts to Declare Obama’s IRS Scandal Over
“Turns out it wasn’t just Tea Party groups. It was also groups labeled progressive. Which means this whole thing is over now. Right? Maybe this whole thing is over now. I think, maybe, this thing is over now.”
— Host Rachel Maddow on MSNBC’s The Rachel Maddow Show, June 24.
“The IRS ‘scandal’ [makes air quote marks] looks like it’s a bureaucratic scandal, not the political scandal that Republicans were wishing that they had come up with....This sort of brings me to [House Chairman] Darrell Issa at this point. I mean, this is the guy who is — I mean, he is living the fable of the boy who cried wolf, at this point.”
— Anchor Chuck Todd setting up a panel discussion on MSNBC’s The Daily Rundown, June 25.
vs.
“Refuting Democratic suggestions that progressive groups were also swept up in the IRS probe of the tax status of Tea Party organizations, the Treasury Department’s inspector general has revealed that just six progressive groups were targeted compared to 292 conservative groups. In a letter to congressional Democrats, the inspector general also said that 100 percent of Tea Party groups seeking special tax status were put under IRS review, while only 30 percent of the progressive groups felt the same pressure.”
— Washington Examiner columnist Paul Bedard in a June 27 post summarizing the official conclusions of the Treasury Department’s Inspector General for Tax Administration.
Scandals = “Pure Politics” & “Distraction” from Liberal Policy Goals
“You know, the one thing that’s been a common theme throughout this first six months [of Obama’s second term] has been distractions, the ways in which pure politics has driven what ends up happening....On the Hill, we spent more time talking about the IRS and Benghazi and the NSA, and privacy and tapping or gathering information from our phones, than almost anything else. And now, is that just because it’s more interesting to talk about a distraction than to try to get policy done?”
— Host Gwen Ifill on PBS’s Washington Week, July 5.
Pro-Abortion Democrat Celebrated as New “Political Star”
“The marathon filibuster that went viral has turned a little-known Texas lawmaker into a national political star....Some political analysts are comparing it to the 1988 Democratic convention speech that catapulted Ann Richards to the national stage.”
— Correspondent Manuel Bojorquez on CBS This Morning, June 27.
“She was a state senator Tuesday morning. By Wednesday, she was a political celebrity known across the nation....Her feat of stamina and conviction gained thousands of Twitter followers in a matter of hours. Pictures of the sneakers she wore beneath her dress zoomed across computer and television screens....Even President Obama noticed, posting a Twitter message on Tuesday that read, ‘Something special is happening in Austin tonight.’”
— New York Times correspondent Manny Fernandez in a June 27 article.
“You’ve met tough things before in your life, though, as a single mother, a woman who went from community college to TCU to Harvard Law School, and back to practice law. So, this seems to be another challenge for you....It [the filibuster] has also catapulted you in the political limelight. Will you run for governor or for national office now?”
— Co-host Charlie Rose setting up an interview with Davis on CBS This Morning, June 27.
“A Democrat in the governor’s mansion here? Unthinkable a week ago; a ‘maybe’ today.”
— Correspondent Miguel Marquez on CNN's New Day, July 1.
“If I were Wendy Davis, I would not limit myself to think about just being the governor of Texas. I think that she is a star. I think she has the guts, the political moxie. She is exactly what women in this country have been begging for.”
— MSNBC’s Ed Schultz on The Ed Show, June 30.
“Racially Ugly” GOP Refusing to “Add More Brown People”
“Didn’t we do this before? Wasn’t it called ‘indentured servitude,’ where you come, and you pay all this money outhis money out — you’re not a citizen, but you’re legally allowed to work on the farm? This sounds like indentured servitude, is what they want....It is also a very ugly, sort of, ethnic argument, that they don’t want to add more brown people to the population of the United States underlying this argument....This whole premise is so racially ugly.”
— MSNBC analyst Joy Reid, who is also managing editor of the NBC-owned TheGrio.com, on MSNBC’s Now with Alex Wagner, July 11, reacting to suggestions Republicans might accept legal status, but not citizenship, to illegal immigrants.
“On immigration, what’s shocking is to see the immigration bill go to the House, where they’re not going to take it up, even though it got the 68 votes, a huge majority in the Senate, and the House Judiciary Committee is on border security and ensuring cheap labor for America. Otherwise, they don’t want to consider anything having to do with giving dignity to immigrants, and that’s where I think the GOP is just behind the tide.”
— Bloomberg’s Margaret Carlson, formerly of CNN and Time, on Political Capital, June 28.
Obama Needs to Save Miami, Just “Five Feet in the Air”
“And why did President Obama try to move the ball on global warming and climate change today? Well, because cities like Miami are about to turn into Atlantis if we don’t do something about this. They’re only five feet in the air, Atlantis — I mean Miami....It’s not a joke. It’s frightening....It’s real. It’s not BS. We used to call these guys and women, well, mostly guys, ‘pigs’ back in the ’60s. People that didn’t care about anything except their own wealth. That’s all they cared about. Pigs.”
— Host Chris Matthews on MSNBC’s Hardball, June 25.
Pushing for More Liberal Bias to Balance Fox News Wrongness
“One party is a bunch of knuckle draggers, I won’t say which. But the fault does not go around equally as the media would like to portray it, and it’s partly the media’s fault because they’re not very bright either. And they promote things like false equivalency, which are wrong...So it does come back to the people. They’re very easily fooled and they’re horribly misinformed about everything. And the people who watch Fox News live in a bubble I can’t even describe to you. They have — the facts never get in. It’s like the airlock in an alien movie, you know, that you can’t let the alien in or else you have to blow up the ship.”
— HBO Real Time host Bill Maher on CNN’s Stroumboulopoulos, June 21.
Lumping Limbaugh Into Roll Call of “Egomaniacal Tyrants”
“[Singer Jennifer] Lopez traveled all the way to the country of Turkmenistan to sing ‘Happy Birthday’ to its President, Gurbanguly Berdimukhamedov....This isn’t the first time a celebrity has performed for an egomaniacal tyrant who uses fear and paranoia to keep followers in line. Beyoncé did sing at a New Year’s Eve bash entertaining the family of Moammar Gadhafi, and Elton John performed at the fourth wedding of Rush Limbaugh.”
— Host Chris Hayes on MSNBC’s All In, July 1.
“Madmen” Running America Endanger World “With Our Tyranny”
“The United States is the dominant power in the universe....And the world is in danger with our tyranny....There seem to be madmen running the country. Mad men. They wear suits, they wear ties, they talk nice like Obama or tough like Bush, but what’s the difference? They’re mad men.”
— Director Oliver Stone at the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival in the Czech Republic, July 4, as later reported by TheWrap.com.
PUBLISHER: L. Brent Bozell III
EDITORS: Brent H. Baker, Rich Noyes, Tim Graham
DEPUTY RESEARCH DIRECTOR: Geoffrey Dickens
NEWS ANALYSTS: Scott Whitlock, Brad Wilmouth, Matthew Balan, Kyle Drennen and Matt Hadro
INTERNS: Jeffrey Meyer, Matt Vespa, Paul Bremmer, Andrew Lautz and Nathan Roush